20 Jan
2018
20 Jan
'18
6:11 p.m.
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on FreeBSD, I thought it would be
cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see numbers
for v5, v6 and v7 in the tuhs tree view, and it appears these versions are
complete enough for me to extract the kernels themselves. However, I see
nothing prior to that. The archives seem to be somewhat incomplete, but I'm
wondering if people have sizes for earlier versions. Later versions are
more problematic because they move to new hardware, instruction sets, etc.
For this graph to be meaningful, it would need to be pdp-11 only, though
I'm of the opinion more data is better than less. I'll also be extracting
the different V7 commercial kernels: V7M, Ultrix and Venix and the BSD 2.x
releases, but those appear to be intact enough in the archives to extract
data on my own. I've heard rumors there's a SysV for the pdp-11, but I've
not been able to locate images for that. I don't need the actual images,
just sizes with some reference for the source of the data. It's just for
one slide in the talk, so I don't want to burn a ton of time on it...
The larger picture is that I've written what's effectively modprobe for
FreeBSD and will be talking about it in detail. How it's like modprobe, how
it's different, how all the pieces fit together, history of similar
efforts, etc. Part of the driving force here is the bloated FreeBSD GENERIC
kernel.
Of course, I'll share the final report I'm planning on sizes with the group.
Thanks for any data you can provide.
Warner
7:22 p.m.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018, at 13:11, Warner Losh wrote:
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on
FreeBSD, I thought it would be
cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see numbers
for v5, v6 and v7 in the tuhs tree view, and it appears these versions are
complete enough for me to extract the kernels themselves. However, I see
nothing prior to that.
There is a possibly V2 era kernel (two, actually) on the s1-bits tape image, but it's
been too long since I looked at this and I don't recall exactly how to extract them.
I posted about this at the time, but there wasn't any interest - I'd determined
that s1 was in fact an "init tape" as described in V1 boot.7 and V3 bproc.8.
Those manpages do mention the size that was allocated on disk/tape for each kernel in
those eras: 6K and 7-8K words [so twice that number of bytes], respectively.
To determine how much headroom was in this allocation, I just now went through and checked
the s1-bits file for empty 512-byte blocks. It consists of 25 blocks of data (12800
bytes), followed by 4 blocks of zeros. I think that region of the tape was the bootloaders
followed by the "cold boot" kernel. Then there are 22 blocks (11264 bytes) of
data [then 10 blocks zeros], which was IIRC the other kernel (the "warm boot"
kernel, which did not contain code for reinitializing the filesystem). The rest of the
tape (not kernel images) is 490 blocks (245 KB) of data, followed by 27 blocks of 0xFF.
9:14 p.m.
On 20 Jan 2018 11:11 -0700, from imp(a)bsdimp.com (Warner Losh):
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on
FreeBSD, I thought it would be
cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see numbers
for v5, v6 and v7 in the tuhs tree view, and it appears these versions are
complete enough for me to extract the kernels themselves. However, I see
nothing prior to that. The archives seem to be somewhat incomplete, but I'm
wondering if people have sizes for earlier versions.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/tree/Research-V1-Snapshot-D…
looks like it might be useful.
It's possible that Warren might want to add some of that to the TUHS
archives as well.
--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se
“The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person
is to think you know what you’re doing.” (Bret Victor)
21 Jan
21 Jan
12:19 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 11:11:24AM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on
FreeBSD, I thought it would
be cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see
numbers for v5, v6 and v7 in the tuhs tree view, and it appears these
versions are complete enough for me to extract the kernels themselves.
However, I see nothing prior to that.
Github has this project: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72
with a June 1972 Unix kernel. Doing a "make", the generated build/unix is:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 wkt wkt 36432 Jan 21 10:10 build/unix
but I don't have a PDP-11 "size" command to give details.
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v3/ has a Unix
system written in C, timestamped August 31, 1973 (just before Fourth Edition).
Inside nsys.tar.gz you will find:
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 26820 1973-09-24 03:41 u
which is the kernel image.
Unfortunately, we don't have a kernel from 1st Edition or 4th Edition.
Cheers, Warren
1:41 a.m.
On Saturday, January 20, 2018, Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 11:11:24AM -0700, Warner Losh
wrote:
Comparing size of kernels is cool and fun, but IMHO comparing system calls
is a more valuable metric as to measure the kernel bloat.
It would be interesting to compare number of implemented system calls in
various UNIX operating systems along with those kernel sizes, e.g., V7 had
around 50 system calls, current FreeBSD and Linux have more than 500...
--Andy
For a presentation I'm doing this summer
on FreeBSD, I thought it would
be cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see
numbers for v5, v6 and v7 in the tuhs tree view, and it appears these
versions are complete enough for me to extract the kernels themselves.
However, I see nothing prior to that.
Github has this project: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72
with a June 1972 Unix kernel. Doing a "make", the generated build/unix is:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 wkt wkt 36432 Jan 21 10:10 build/unix
but I don't have a PDP-11 "size" command to give details.
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v3/ has a Unix
system written in C, timestamped August 31, 1973 (just before Fourth
Edition).
Inside nsys.tar.gz you will find:
-rw-r--r-- 0/0 26820 1973-09-24 03:41 u
which is the kernel image.
Unfortunately, we don't have a kernel from 1st Edition or 4th Edition.
22 Jan
22 Jan
3:51 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 5:19 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Unfortunately, we don't have a kernel from 1st
Edition or 4th Edition.
Do we have v8, v9 or v10 kernels? I looked at the tarballs in the archives
and couldn't find unix, bsd, or kernel in any of them. Is there some name
that's used that I've managed to miss out on?
Warner
4:39 a.m.
Weren’t these (or their source code) recently released by the IP owner?
Virtually Fun has an article about installing and running v8, including an image.
https://virtuallyfun.com/2017/03/30/research-unix-v8/
I expect you can find more there and the TUHS pages that he references.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
6:53 a.m.
On Jan 21, 2018 9:40 PM, "Grant Taylor via TUHS" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
Weren’t these (or their source code) recently released by the IP owner?
Virtually Fun has an article about installing and running v8, including an
image.
https://virtuallyfun.com/2017/03/30/research-unix-v8/
I expect you can find more there and the TUHS pages that he references.
I've already looked. There is the source but no kernels...
Warner
21 Jan
21 Jan
2:08 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on
FreeBSD, I thought it would be
cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors of Unix. I see numbers
You might find http://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/working-set/ interesting.
It intentionally fills virtual memory, and measures how much must must
be malloc'd and filled with gibberish, to cause thrashing.
Subtracting that from the amount of physmem in the machine, gives a
sort of measure of OS overhead.
2:13 a.m.
While you're at it, I heard once that the latest GCC *manual* (>500 pp
at last look) was larger than "the whole Unix distribution". Is
there any truth to that?
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Stromberg" <drsalists(a)gmail.com>
To:"Warner Losh" <imp(a)bsdimp.com>
Cc:"The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs(a)tuhs.org>
Sent:Sat, 20 Jan 2018 18:08:43 -0800
Subject:Re: [TUHS] Kernel Sizes
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
For a presentation I'm doing this summer on
FreeBSD, I thought it
would be
cool to get the kernel sizes for various old flavors
of Unix. I see
numbers
You might find http://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/working-set/
interesting.
It intentionally fills virtual memory, and measures how much must
must
be malloc'd and filled with gibberish, to cause thrashing.
Subtracting that from the amount of physmem in the machine, gives a
sort of measure of OS overhead.
4:24 a.m.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Steve Johnson <scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:
While you're at it, I heard once that the latest
GCC *manual* (>500 pp at
last look) was larger than "the whole Unix distribution". Is there any
truth to that?
compressed (gz), the entire v7 tape 3.5MB. The compressed (gz) source is
250k. Uncompressed tape is 11.5MB while the source is 1.1MB.
gcc 7.2.0 compressed (gz) is 105MB. gcc/doc directory is 13.5MB:
% tar tvf gcc-7.2.0.tar.xz gcc-7.2.0/gcc/doc | awk '{a += $5;} END {print
a;}'
13,470,317
So yea, gcc 7.2 manual is larger than the v7 distribution tapes.
Warner
10:53 p.m.
On Saturday, 20 January 2018 at 21:24:27 -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Steve Johnson
<scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:
It would be interesting to compare llvm. Here are the most recent
FreeBSD packages (effectively installation tarballs). gcc pales by
comparison:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 90,805,148 23 Sep 15:53
/var/cache/pkg/gcc6-6.4.0_1-13072ceeab.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 90,819,108 30 Sep 15:18
/var/cache/pkg/gcc6-6.4.0_2-d83317c1d0.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 305,101,072 16 Nov 18:30
/var/cache/pkg/llvm40-4.0.1_4-06c71eb2eb.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 341,208,492 19 Dec 17:05
/var/cache/pkg/llvm50-5.0.0_6-b3fff834c7.txz
Greg
--
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While you're at it, I heard once that the
latest GCC *manual* (>500 pp at
last look) was larger than "the whole Unix distribution". Is there any
truth to that?
compressed (gz), the entire v7 tape 3.5MB. The compressed (gz) source is
250k. Uncompressed tape is 11.5MB while the source is 1.1MB.
gcc 7.2.0 compressed (gz) is 105MB. gcc/doc directory is 13.5MB:
tar tvf gcc-7.2.0.tar.xz gcc-7.2.0/gcc/doc | awk
'{a += $5;} END {print
a;}'
13,470,317
So yea, gcc 7.2 manual is larger than the v7 distribution tapes. 
22 Jan
22 Jan
1:19 a.m.
On Mon, 22 Jan 2018, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
On Saturday, 20 January 2018 at 21:24:27 -0700, Warner
Losh wrote:
Yikes, and I thought *GNU* sofware was a pig. o.O
-uso.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Steve Johnson
<scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:
It would be interesting to compare llvm. Here are the most recent
FreeBSD packages (effectively installation tarballs). gcc pales by
comparison:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 90,805,148 23 Sep 15:53
/var/cache/pkg/gcc6-6.4.0_1-13072ceeab.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 90,819,108 30 Sep 15:18
/var/cache/pkg/gcc6-6.4.0_2-d83317c1d0.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 305,101,072 16 Nov 18:30
/var/cache/pkg/llvm40-4.0.1_4-06c71eb2eb.txz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 341,208,492 19 Dec 17:05
/var/cache/pkg/llvm50-5.0.0_6-b3fff834c7.txz While you're at it, I heard once that the
latest GCC *manual* (>500 pp at
last look) was larger than "the whole Unix distribution". Is there any
truth to that?
compressed (gz), the entire v7 tape 3.5MB. The compressed (gz) source is
250k. Uncompressed tape is 11.5MB while the source is 1.1MB.
gcc 7.2.0 compressed (gz) is 105MB. gcc/doc directory is 13.5MB:
tar tvf gcc-7.2.0.tar.xz gcc-7.2.0/gcc/doc | awk
'{a += $5;} END {print
a;}'
13,470,317
So yea, gcc 7.2 manual is larger than the v7 distribution tapes.
2294
days inactive
2296
days old
13 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Andy Kosela -
Dan Stromberg -
Donald ODona -
Grant Taylor -
Greg 'groggy' Lehey -
Michael Kjörling -
Random832 -
Steve Johnson -
Steve Nickolas -
Warner Losh -
Warren Toomey